Having a Bear of a Time at the Zoo

From Dave Brigham:

What's the smartest animal in the zoo? An elephant, with its great memory? A bear, which is considered as smart as some higher primates? Apes, with their tool manipulation skills and sharp sense of fashion?

(Stolen from the Casual Debris web site.)

I don't know, but the answer to "Who is the most dumbest?" is: me.

There was a time several years ago when my kids, who are five years apart, were at the right age for zoo visits. I took them once to the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, and a handful of times to the Franklin Park Zoo, which straddles Boston's Jamaica Plain and Roxbury neighborhoods. After one of our visits, which included checking out an amazing playground, as well as lots of cool animals ranging from lions and zebras, to kangaroos, baboons and camels, I dragged the kids along outside the zoo proper to look for something I'd heard about for years: the bear dens.

I first became aware of the bear dens after seeing the 2003 movie "Mystic River." You can catch a glimpse of them at the 43-second mark in the trailer below:

After launching this blog in March 2010, I began following similarly minded web sites and, eventually, Instagram accounts, and I saw photos and write-ups of the bear dens. So what are/were the dens? Here's what Wikipedia says....

Once the focus of the zoo, the Bear Dens were designed and built in 1912, and were planned to have a small collection of domestic animals. The original grounds featured a grand staircase leading to a large courtyard, framed by several large iron bear cages. One of these cages featured a detailed stone sculpture of bears and the crest of the City of Boston. Plans of expanding the Long Crouch Woods section of the zoo never came to fruition. As the grounds deteriorated, and as the Parks Department neglected many of the landscape's most basic management needs, the Bear Dens became too expensive to maintain. The exhibit area was officially closed in 1954. It was later lopped off of the zoo property permanently in 1958, when the Metropolitan District Commission took over management of the zoo.

So during that visit to the zoo with my kids -- which I believe was the last time we were there -- I decided that they should be part of what was sure to be a magnificent occasion: my exploration of the bear dens after dreaming of this mission for years! So, having really no idea of where to look, or precisely what we were looking for, we headed out the exit to Pierpont Road, and then curved eastward along a path between the zoo and Seaver Street. Below is some of what we saw.

(Some benches and tables in the woods.)

(A small building that I know nothing about.)

We saw a few other things behind the fences, but nothing that I took to be bear dens. After 10-15 minutes, we headed back to the car. I was dejected and really wishing I'd done a bit more research ahead of time, but I stuck the idea of returning to the zoo into the back of my mind. Any time I would ask my kids about going to the zoo, they poo-poohed it. I put "Franklin Park bear dens" on both of my "some day I'll explore" lists for this blog.

And years went by.

Then, this past summer, on a day when my son and I were hanging around with nothing to do, I told him we were going on an adventure.

"Where?" he asked. At age 17, he's more willing to jump in the car with me for random explorations than he was when he was 14 or 15.

"I'll tell you when we get there," I said. In the intervening years, after seeing more Instagram posts about the bear dens and Long Crouch Woods, and actually looking at Google Maps, I knew exactly where to go in Franklin Park.

We parked near the zoo, walked past a cricket match in a nearby field and then strolled down Playstead Road, past a baseball field and a few dozen picnickers. I noticed a wide gravel path leading up a short hill into the woods, heading toward Seaver Street. I sensed this was the route.

After about two minutes, I was vindicated.

After so many years, I'd finally made it to the old bear dens. Look at that relief work. The sculptor portrays a real sense of majesty and fear in those bears, don'tcha think? And they still look strong and dangerous after more than 100 years!

The funny thing about exploring the backside of America is that when I stumble across a dusty, old, small-town factory or a rusted car in the woods or a ghost sign in the middle of the city, I have the sense that I've discovered it, that nobody has ever seen it before. And so it was with the bear dens. I felt a great sense of accomplishment that I'd found this place that has such great history to it, even though countless folks had been there before me.

I looked at the walls and thought, "Hmm. Couldn't a bear climb out of that enclosure?" Well, then I walked up closer to those walls.

Ouch.

More ouch.

I have no idea what this little structure was for.

That little doorway led to the bears' sleeping quarters, I reckon.

This is the back of the sleeping quarters.

The last three pictures show the same part of the complex, possibly another sleeping area for the bears. Or perhaps where they ate or were trained or tended to medically. I'm not sure.

So what's to become of these ruins, which have sat in the woods decaying for well more than half a century?

"The Parks Department issued 'General Plans' for Franklin Park in 1980 and 1990 that included ideas for an interpretive area, a stop on a nature trail, a playground or a snack bar for the Bear Dens," per this 2014 Jamaica Plain Gazette article. "But, according to City Parks and Recreation spokesperson Jacquelyn Goddard, the City has never had an active plan to renovate or maintain the Bear Dens."

I'm not sure whether that's still the case five years later.